Whether my brain got over-saturated with the details of this story from thinking about it non-stop for all of break and then some or I'm just a lazy bastard with elaborate excuses is debatable, but either way I've been avoiding this far more than I should. Hopefully talking about some of the things that I have set in my head here will get me back into things more appropriately. The good news is, I think I've got the characters pretty well set - my issues are more related to specific events and what I can or can't squeeze into this thing.
Let's see, we've got Detective Nate Hawkins. He's a very lonely, very abrasive Internal Affairs investigator. Nobody likes him. Oh yeah, and there's a mob-related crime wave going down. I think it makes the most sense to have the story set in a North Philly suburb-type area, as it would still have a somewhat seedy city feel to it while making it more plausible that a lot of the characters knew each other when they were in high school and that sort of thing.
Back to Nate, he's in his mid-30s and has all the other cops, who can't stand him, are convinced he's gonna kill himself. This might not make it into the script, but he once "jokingly" said that he wouldn't kill himself until his mom died. Well, his mom just died a few weeks before the start. They didn't talk much, but he would support her financially. Meanwhile, he's got a deadbeat brother with whom he doesn't get along who was a mooch off their mother and they argue over who was the better son, since his brother actually spent time with her.
Nate's never been in a relationship. Ever. No, he is not an alcoholic. I actually considered having him be a Pepsi junkie just to poke fun at the notion of the cop with a drinking problem. We'll see if that makes it. The thing is, Nate is actually pretty good at his job despite the his inability to deal with people properly. Sure, nobody likes him, but he doesn't really stir up a lot of trouble and he kind of keeps everyone from getting too sloppy. It doesn't hurt that the Internal Affairs board's level of authority is kind of a joke. Depending on what ending I go with (you'll see what I'm talking about as I get further into this), I really want to have a running theme of Nate struggling to resist giving into a sense of brutality. In early drafts, I had it where he would push the excessive force boundaries with each criminal he'd apprehend, even threatening them with the idea that he could kill them and would be right to do so. Every time, he stops himself (though he may have one formal brutality charge against him), but in the end, he'd snap and kill someone who probably deserved it. But I'm getting really far ahead of myself with that.
He's got an extreme sense of justice at all costs, has no respect for the rights of criminals, and has been shot so many times that he can't keep his hand steady enough to fire a gun properly. I'll probably have it so that he doesn't hit a single shot until the end. He's a tough bastard who will get hurt a lot throughout and keep on coming, to the point where he's kind of bumbling in his pursuits. There's nothing smooth about what he does, and it's more through will, determination, and some cleverness that he survives rather than physical ability.
I've sort of developed everything else in the story as stemming from Nate's character and what would be needed to test and challenge him and that sort of thing, rather than starting with a plot first. What does he want? Love (isn't that sweet?), though he would never say it, and I'll get into that later. What does he need? Probably the same thing, but on a more basic level, he just needs somebody to care about him and vice versa. The Detective thing keeps him going day to day and gives him something to do, but he has it more because he's compelled to fight crime more than actually taking pleasure in the job. He's not really qualified to do anything else.
Definitely more to come. I'll get into the other characters.
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